Your Craigslist Classifieds Authority Site

2. Write a Killer, Attention Grabbing Title

A title can make or break you on Craigslist. So how do you write a killer, attention grabbing title? You're about to find out how.

It is of utmost importance to have excellent titles on all your Craigslist postings. Realize that your title has a very important objective, and that is:

To get people to click on your posting and read your description!

Your title won't be doing the selling. That is what your description is for. You are actually using the title to create interest and using the description to sell the item.

It's important to understand this. You simply need to grab attention and create interest so they click on your post and read your description. It is in your description where you can really sell them on the item.

Try to think like this: When you are walking down an aisle of a store, what jumps out at you? Most of the time a sign that says “Sale”, or “Clearance”, etc... You can use the same psychology in your titles.

The title is what Craigslist browsers will see as they are looking down the list of items for sale. They are ordered in chronological order, with the most recent posting being first. You want to get noticed on that list so that customers will click on your title and read your description and hopefully buy your item.

Now, how exactly do you write a killer title? Here's the key elements:

Your title needs to include: 1) some phrase (or phrases) to catch the viewers attention; 2) the item, the manufacturer, and model number of the item you are selling; and 3) only the good specs/features of the item.

Let's go further into the reasoning for this.

Craigslist's search engine works in following way: by default, if you do a search for something on Craigslist, the search engine will search both the title and the description of all the postings for the words you typed in the search bar. On Ebay and other similar sites, only the title is searched. Craigslist is different in this respect in that it searches the description as well. You can still search descriptions on Ebay, and you can even set Craigslist to search only titles, but what I'm talking about are the default settings of the search engine. And most normal users will use the default settings.
My guess as to why Craigslist works this way is because the database of listings is only a few months worth of data and because it is broken down by city there are much fewer listings than all the cities put together. Therefore Craigslist can still return relevant results quickly by searching both the title and description of all the postings for a given city. Whatever the reason, we will base our selling strategy on the way the default settings are on Craigslist search.

If you don't use Craigslist search and simply pick a category, you get the chronological list of all the items for sale. Now that you understand how Craigslist search works, let's get back to writing a good title.

Hint - Use all the characters available to you in the title.

You have exactly 70 characters to work with in your title. Try to use them all! The space alloted to you in the title is prime real estate so make use of it. If you do, you will stand out above the others. This is one of the most underused things on Craigslist – the use of all the characters available in the title. If you take a look at Craigslist, you'll see, almost no one uses all 70 characters in their titles, but the ones that do really stand out!

1) Get the viewers attention!

Start your title off with something to get the viewers attention: like “Check it out!” , “Incredible Deal!”, “Unbelievable!”, or even “Clearance!” or “Sale!” if it fits the item. something to catch their interest and get them to want to read further. You can even say “Click on This!”, or some other phrase to stir the viewer into action. The use of verbs in advertising is always good because you want the viewer to take action and click on your posting.

See these examples:

Clearance Sale! MacBook 1.83Ghz 2GB RAM, 80GB HD - $1150

Click Here! HP Pavilion Tablet PC with AMD 1.9ghz, 1gb RAM, - $950

Another effective way to grab attention is to use punctuation , like asterisks or exclamation marks. See the below example:

**Wiley X PT-1 Smoke Lens Brand New Sunglasses w/ case**

The two asterisks at the beginning and end help the listing stand out among the others but do not look tacky. DO NOT OVERUSE PUNCTUATION MARKS! They can make your title looks ridiculous, unprofessional, and annoying.

Another way to catch attention is with the use of uppercase lettering in the title. But again DON'T OVERDO IT!

Here's an example of a good use of uppercase letters in the title:

ARNOLD PALMER Autographed Artwork 34"x42" 13th Green at Augusta

See how this catches your attention but again, does not look tacky?

2) List the Item, Manufacturer, and Model Number In Your Title

Many browsers of Craigslist are looking for something particular and don't want to have their time wasted clicking on vague postings only to never find what they are looking for. I feel it is doing them a service, and is also professional (and profitable), to display in your title the item, manufacturer, and model number. This gives the viewer a very good idea of what you are pitching.

Here's an example.: I have a Dell laptop. The model is an Inspiron 600m. In my title I would include: “Dell Inspiron 600m Laptop Computer” , not just “Dell Laptop”.

The first and probably best reason to do this is that you will come up in more targeted search results. If someone is searching on Craigslist and types in the search bar “Dell Inspiron”, your listing will appear. Even if someone types “Dell Laptop”, your listing will appear.

But, if all you put in your title was “Dell Laptop”, Your listing will NOT appear if someone is looking for an “Inspiron” model by typing in the search bar “Dell Inspiron”

And as we talked about earlier, though the default setting of Craigslist search is to search the title and description of each posting, some people turn this off so that Craigslist only searches the titles – not the descriptions. If the Craigslist user has his search settings this way, you'll want to make sure that your title is filled with keywords that will make you appear in more search results. That is why it is good to have the manufacture, model number, and item described in your title.

The second reason is also that it makes your listing look more professional, and will increase your credibility as a seller. I mean which of the below titles would you click on?

2005 Cadillac STS, Bose Audio & Navigation, Low Miles, Check it out!

or

Caddy from mid 2000's

Next Page